Duly bewildered, I could only stare at the multitudes of small, pale, odd smelling creatures as they fell back, pushed together and hindering one another's flight in their flightfull haste. Beside me, Ardacon dropped to all fours, ready to spring after the retreating mob of gesticulating creatures.
"Wait, Ard, they don't seem dangerous. I think we should try and-" I broke off and doubled over, gagging and retching. A smell had reached me from down the hard pathway- alien and yet familiar. It was not unlike the rot of carrion, the exotic tang of lightning, or the decaying smell creatures gave off when deathly sick. All of these could be unpleasant, but only as the sight of a decaying carcass, the sound of thunder overhead, or the feel of dying body were all discomforting in their own unique right. The ill-feelings lay in what was actually being perceived, not the simple observance of it. This scent, though, was in sharp contrast to the rule.
It was faint but horrible, making me shake in primal revulsion as it descended down my sinuses like a virus. My head felt cold, but the fur on my body was suddenly uncomfortably hot. I felt the edges of my skin flicker, threatening to revert to my smaller, less bestial, form. Whatever this exotic spoor was, my body, on some deep level, liked it less than I did.
Ardacon slowly recovered his posture and his breath from his own reflexively induced panting. "Aw, damm, what is that?"
Out of the corner of my eye, a new stranger, but squat, pure black and... Hazy, in a way, was rapidly approaching. I snorted the last of the scent out of my snout, stood up straighter to accost it, and nearly blanched when I realized the smell was coming from it.
"Who are you? Where are we?" I called, feeling the fur on the back of my neck spiking like it was trying to lift off my body.
The thing - as I got a better look at it, I decided that 'person' was far too generous a term- was nearly as tall as I was; an eight foot stack of black goop, twitching and undulating as it bore down on us. Aside from the smell, which I was starting to slowly adapt to tolerate without passing out, there was something that I couldn't place. Whatever lack of business me and Ardacon had here, this thing should not have been around far more than us. It's basic presence was inconsistent, aberrant, wrong.
It didn't respond to my inquests, but instead accelerated and shot out an inky tentacle for my torso. I yelped and swatted it away, feeling its poor imitation flesh bulge and shudder away from the impact. "Get back!" It didn't even slow under my rebuke, and I leapt farther backwards, swiping at the tendrils issuing from its' gelatinous body in growing numbers.
A limb terminating in a blunt blade slashed across at chest height. I ducked, lashing forward and out to rake my claws down it's front. With satisfaction I felt it's rubbery surface part under my claws with only slightly more resistance than thick mud. A thin fluid dribbled from the cut, and I gagged as the smell worsened dramatically.
Somewhere nearby, a hunting howl sounded out as Ardacon flew through the air, landing on the creature's tapered apex and clawing savagely. A squadron of black limbs pulled from the thing's upper body to pound away at him, only increasing his frenzy.
Two larger appendages beset me, firing chopping motions at my head rapidly, before pulling back to strike snake-like from different angles. The 'skin' on it's arms seemed to be hardening as we fought; whenever I scratched them as I knocked them away, the flesh broke with greater difficulty and the blood-like putrescence trickled out in increasingly shallow dosages.
Ardacon howled again, seizing a tentacle pounding at his head between two fists and biting it clear off. Snarling as the others continued bruising, he flung it at the ground, where I distantly noted that it writhed and started squirming away -before a tentacle bashed me up-side the head. Star-like spots of color flickered across my vision as I eagerly stepped forward into it's grasp, redoubling my flurry of slashing claws.
The reek was thick in the air now, as, soundless, the thing fought on. it could manipulate its flesh, but only somewhat. It hardened, but was still permeable, the ends of it's built in weapons narrowed, but never became true blades. It punched and slammed out at us, but unlike us, could not truly cut or breach the skin.
But if it felt pain, it never demonstrated any hindrance from it, and if it was tiring at all under the exertion of the struggle, it wasn't showing. Ardacon gave an unassuming grunt as a thick limb formed beneath him and shot upwards, slamming into his gut with enough force to knock him flying through the air and out of my vision. With only that as a warning, the thing lurched forward, a half dozen frsh tentacles bursting forth to ensnare me as a grotesque cavity writhing with slime opening in its front while it reeled me in.
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